Female Friendship Theme Analysis

Though gender norms shift throughout the course of the novel as a result of changing occupations and laws, one constant theme is friendship between women. The relationship between Mariam and Laila rests at the heart of the novel, as even its structure reveals: Part I takes Mariam’s perspective, Part II takes Laila’s, and Part III alternates between them. Laila also treasures her friendship with her classmates Giti and Hasina, with whom she shares laughs, games, and secrets about boys—forgetting for a time about the violence and dangers of their adolescence.

By the time the Mujahideen impose their own restrictions on the place of women in Afghanistan, female friendship becomes one way to subvert these restrictions from within. Mariam and Laila, for instance, band together against Rasheed, the husband of both and the source of much of their suffering. Most drastically, this takes the form of their plot to escape. But in more subtle ways, the time they spend together drinking tea, joking, and laughing allows them to draw strength from each other and endure their oppression. Even in a society where women cannot participate in the public sphere, the book suggests, relationships between women serve not only as a source of escape but as a means to assert their own legitimacy and dignity.